BtVS Ficlet: Stolen Voices
Title: Stolen Voices
Fandom: BtVS
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Buffy, Riley, Giles, Scoobies.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Hush.
Summary: The whole town has been rendered speechless, but this is Sunnydale, so the cause is never going to be anything as simple as a laryngitis epidemic.
Word Count: 922
Written For: Challenge 82: Speechless at beattheblackdog.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters.
It’s like a plague, or an epidemic, or something, only nobody has the faintest idea what’s causing it, just that nobody can speak. No matter how hard anyone tries, not so much as a whisper comes out.
Theories are being tossed around by the medical experts, for all the good that does any of those afflicted. The fact remains that the whole of Sunnydale seems to have come down with acute laryngitis overnight, which goes beyond unnatural and into bizarre-o territory.
The town has been quarantined, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing because whatever’s going on pretty much has to be demonic in some way. Hellmouth, right? The way Buffy sees it, germs are way less likely than demons, so if anyone’s going to find a cure it’ll be her and her buds, not some doctor in a lab with a bunch of test tubes and cultures.
The thing is, not being able to speak makes strategy sessions more like a game of charades, or a Mime convention, which… Do Mimes even have conventions? ‘Cause that would be kinda creepy. Still, just goes to show there are other ways of communicating than by speech, like Professor Walsh was telling them in class, except Buffy had slept through most of that. Good thing she could count on Willow’s notes.
Speaking, or not speaking, of notes… Writing them to each other is time consuming but it’s more or less working, and Giles really rocked his presentation using the overhead projector. Buffy thinks she might want to have a word with him when this is over though. It’s not just that he made her hips look enormous, which was bad enough, but some of his stick figure drawings were way gory. She never would have imagined her stoic and oh-so-British Watcher had such a bloodthirsty streak hidden beneath all the tweed. It was a little disturbing; she wasn’t sure whether to be proud of him or grossed out.
Still, Giles’ flair for the macabre is beside the point. There are other, more urgent matters to deal with, top of the list being a bunch of demons, the Gentlemen, who are roaming Sunnydale killing people and stealing their hearts. They need to be stopped, pronto, and all it will take is a single scream, which would be fine if every single person in town wasn’t currently speechless. Got to hand it to the Gentlemen, they didn’t skimp on their preparations.
So, now it’s not just a case of keeping the Gentlemen from taking any more hearts, which would be hard enough since they can’t be killed in any of the usual ways, like decapitation, or stabbing. Buffy also has to somehow get her voice back. This whole heart-stealing demon things sucks. Vamps are so much easier to deal with; a pointy stick, and poof, job done. Oh for the good old days of vampire slayage, when things were simple.
Buffy pushes that thought ruthlessly aside; it’s pointless getting all nostalgic. If the Gentlemen have stolen everyone’s voices, then it stands to reason that they must have them stored away somewhere, maybe in the box she’s been seeing in her dreams. Buffy just needs to find out where they’re hiding it, preferably without Riley finding out her secret identity.
Which turns out to be easier said than done, because while looking for the box she finds someone else patrolling, and he’s suspiciously well armed for a run-of-the-mill student, not to mention boasting all kinds of impressive fighting skills. Looks like Buffy might not be the only one with a secret. Awkward much? There’ll be words between her and Riley, but that’ll have to wait until later.
The box, when Buffy eventually locates it, is exactly like the one in her dream, but it’s out of her reach. This part is down to Riley, and after a couple of false starts she manages to get through to him that he needs to open it. He might be pretty, but turns out he’s a bit dense, so after breaking everything else around it, he ends up smashing it instead. Buffy gives a mental shrug: Open or broken, who cares? It works anyway, releasing the town’s voices like so much mist.
Time to end the Gentlemen once and for all.
No longer speechless, Buffy draws in the deepest breath she can, and then screams as long and as loud as possible; she’s not about to take any chances with a job half done.
There’s an odd sense of satisfaction in seeing the heads of the Gentlemen explode. Okay, maybe Giles isn’t the only one who’s a little on the bloodthirsty side. Slaying is not for the squeamish, but Buffy gave up squeam long ago. Ick is another thing entirely, so she hopes she didn’t get any bits of Gentleman brains on her. She’s ruined enough clothes this year already, especially for a college student on a tight budget.
With the Gentlemen out of the picture everything is gradually getting back to normal, or what passes for normal on the Hellmouth. Now the crisis is over there’s so much Buffy and Riley need to talk about, and since they have their voices back it should be easy.
Only it’s not.
All they have to do is open their mouths and tell each other everything.
Instead, they sit across from each other, hands folded in their laps, each waiting for the other to start the ball rolling.
Speechless once more.
Some things are just really hard to put into words.
The End
Fandom: BtVS
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Buffy, Riley, Giles, Scoobies.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Hush.
Summary: The whole town has been rendered speechless, but this is Sunnydale, so the cause is never going to be anything as simple as a laryngitis epidemic.
Word Count: 922
Written For: Challenge 82: Speechless at beattheblackdog.
Disclaimer: I don’t own BtVS, or the characters.
It’s like a plague, or an epidemic, or something, only nobody has the faintest idea what’s causing it, just that nobody can speak. No matter how hard anyone tries, not so much as a whisper comes out.
Theories are being tossed around by the medical experts, for all the good that does any of those afflicted. The fact remains that the whole of Sunnydale seems to have come down with acute laryngitis overnight, which goes beyond unnatural and into bizarre-o territory.
The town has been quarantined, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing because whatever’s going on pretty much has to be demonic in some way. Hellmouth, right? The way Buffy sees it, germs are way less likely than demons, so if anyone’s going to find a cure it’ll be her and her buds, not some doctor in a lab with a bunch of test tubes and cultures.
The thing is, not being able to speak makes strategy sessions more like a game of charades, or a Mime convention, which… Do Mimes even have conventions? ‘Cause that would be kinda creepy. Still, just goes to show there are other ways of communicating than by speech, like Professor Walsh was telling them in class, except Buffy had slept through most of that. Good thing she could count on Willow’s notes.
Speaking, or not speaking, of notes… Writing them to each other is time consuming but it’s more or less working, and Giles really rocked his presentation using the overhead projector. Buffy thinks she might want to have a word with him when this is over though. It’s not just that he made her hips look enormous, which was bad enough, but some of his stick figure drawings were way gory. She never would have imagined her stoic and oh-so-British Watcher had such a bloodthirsty streak hidden beneath all the tweed. It was a little disturbing; she wasn’t sure whether to be proud of him or grossed out.
Still, Giles’ flair for the macabre is beside the point. There are other, more urgent matters to deal with, top of the list being a bunch of demons, the Gentlemen, who are roaming Sunnydale killing people and stealing their hearts. They need to be stopped, pronto, and all it will take is a single scream, which would be fine if every single person in town wasn’t currently speechless. Got to hand it to the Gentlemen, they didn’t skimp on their preparations.
So, now it’s not just a case of keeping the Gentlemen from taking any more hearts, which would be hard enough since they can’t be killed in any of the usual ways, like decapitation, or stabbing. Buffy also has to somehow get her voice back. This whole heart-stealing demon things sucks. Vamps are so much easier to deal with; a pointy stick, and poof, job done. Oh for the good old days of vampire slayage, when things were simple.
Buffy pushes that thought ruthlessly aside; it’s pointless getting all nostalgic. If the Gentlemen have stolen everyone’s voices, then it stands to reason that they must have them stored away somewhere, maybe in the box she’s been seeing in her dreams. Buffy just needs to find out where they’re hiding it, preferably without Riley finding out her secret identity.
Which turns out to be easier said than done, because while looking for the box she finds someone else patrolling, and he’s suspiciously well armed for a run-of-the-mill student, not to mention boasting all kinds of impressive fighting skills. Looks like Buffy might not be the only one with a secret. Awkward much? There’ll be words between her and Riley, but that’ll have to wait until later.
The box, when Buffy eventually locates it, is exactly like the one in her dream, but it’s out of her reach. This part is down to Riley, and after a couple of false starts she manages to get through to him that he needs to open it. He might be pretty, but turns out he’s a bit dense, so after breaking everything else around it, he ends up smashing it instead. Buffy gives a mental shrug: Open or broken, who cares? It works anyway, releasing the town’s voices like so much mist.
Time to end the Gentlemen once and for all.
No longer speechless, Buffy draws in the deepest breath she can, and then screams as long and as loud as possible; she’s not about to take any chances with a job half done.
There’s an odd sense of satisfaction in seeing the heads of the Gentlemen explode. Okay, maybe Giles isn’t the only one who’s a little on the bloodthirsty side. Slaying is not for the squeamish, but Buffy gave up squeam long ago. Ick is another thing entirely, so she hopes she didn’t get any bits of Gentleman brains on her. She’s ruined enough clothes this year already, especially for a college student on a tight budget.
With the Gentlemen out of the picture everything is gradually getting back to normal, or what passes for normal on the Hellmouth. Now the crisis is over there’s so much Buffy and Riley need to talk about, and since they have their voices back it should be easy.
Only it’s not.
All they have to do is open their mouths and tell each other everything.
Instead, they sit across from each other, hands folded in their laps, each waiting for the other to start the ball rolling.
Speechless once more.
Some things are just really hard to put into words.
The End